Employee engagement doesn't happen by chance. It's built when people feel supported, informed, and empowered to do their best work. But feeling engaged and being truly enabled to perform are two different things.
Our 2025 Benchmark Database, analyzing over 20 million employee responses from 2022-2024, reveals a gap: while overall engagement remains high across most organizations, employees don't experience equal empowerment to actually perform their jobs well. This >performance enablement gap varies significantly by role type and industry, creating hidden barriers to productivity and satisfaction.
Where Do Empowerment Gaps Emerge Between Hourly and Salaried Employees?
Engagement remains strong for both salaried (82%) and hourly (78%) employees. However, when we look deeper at performance enablement — how empowered employees feel to do their work — important gaps emerge.
- Decision-Making Authority: 80% of salaried employees say they have the authority to make decisions necessary to do their job, compared to just 73% of hourly employees. This gap suggests that many frontline employees may face limitations in acting independently, which can slow down execution and reduce accountability.
- Voice in Decisions: Only 63% of hourly employees feel involved in decisions that affect their work, trailing salaried employees by 10 points. Without a voice in shaping their work, hourly employees may feel disconnected from broader goals and less invested in outcomes.
- Effective Systems and Processes: Both groups report similar access to tools and resources, but hourly employees (76%) responded more favorably to having the systems and processes to perform their job than salaried employees (73%). This small but notable reversal — one of the few where hourly employees are more positive — may reflect inefficiencies that are more visible or burdensome in salaried roles.
Even though 9 in 10 employees report clarity on what is expected of them, limited autonomy and decision-making power, especially for hourly employees, can lead to a lack of ownership of tasks, delayed execution, and diminished engagement over time. For organizations looking to elevate performance across the board, giving all employees a stronger voice and the authority to act is key.
How Is the Manufacturing Sector Progressing in Performance Enablement?
In the manufacturing sector, performance enablement has seen notable year-over-year progress, especially in areas tied to autonomy and operational efficiency.
- Authority to Act: Manufacturing employees report more than a two-point increase in the belief that they have the authority to make necessary job decisions. This increase places manufacturing 2 percentage points ahead of the benchmark 2024 average.
- Improved Systems: Sentiment about how effective systems and processes have jumped by nearly 5 percentage points, helping to close the historical gap between manufacturing and other industries. Despite this notable improvement in sentiment year-over-year, manufacturing remains slightly below the benchmark.
These gains point to greater investments in technology, process improvement, and autonomy initiatives. However, progress has not been uniform.
- Resources Still Lag: Compared to last year, perceptions of access to necessary resources declined slightly, suggesting that support infrastructure hasn’t kept pace with improvements in autonomy or processes.
- Sustaining Gains in Accountability: Compared to other industries in the 2024 survey year, accountability for performance represents an area of strength for manufacturing. Although manufacturing is nearly 4% higher than other industries, it still faced a very slight decline in sentiment from 2023 to 2024. This could indicate an early need to evaluate accountability mechanisms to reduce the likelihood of future decreases.
How Can Organizations Enable Performance Across Their Entire Workforce?
Whether on the factory floor or in the office, performance enablement is a critical lever for engagement and efficiency. Our research highlights that even when employees feel generally positive about their work, real empowerment — through decision-making authority, clear systems, and the right resources — makes the difference between showing up and truly performing.
To bridge performance gaps, organizations need to take actionable steps in three key areas:
- Empower Employees at All Levels: Whether salaried or hourly, all employees should have the authority to make decisions that affect their roles. Organizations can ensure this by fostering a culture of trust and autonomy, creating clear decision-making frameworks, and offering training that enables employees to take ownership of their work.
- Streamline Systems and Processes: Systems and processes should be designed to empower, not obstruct. Conduct regular reviews of workflows to identify bottlenecks or inefficiencies, invest in modern technology tools, and standardize processes to make them more transparent and accessible for all employees.
- Clarify and Reinforce Accountability: Accountability for performance needs to be clear, consistent, and fair. To achieve this, organizations should ensure expectations are communicated from the top down, regularly track and measure performance, and create an environment where employees are held responsible in ways that are equitable and motivating.
Bridging these gaps isn’t just a matter of fairness; it’s a business imperative. Empowered employees are more agile, more engaged, and better equipped to drive outcomes that matter. Investing in performance enablement helps organizations unlock their workforce's full potential.
Ready to Close Your Performance Enablement Gaps?
The data is clear: when organizations enable performance at every level — from the C-suite to the frontlines — they create more engaged, productive, and loyal workforces. Perceptyx's comprehensive People Insights Platform helps you identify and address performance enablement gaps across all employee segments, with AI-powered insights that turn feedback into action.
Ready to empower every employee to succeed? Schedule a demo with our team to discover how Perceptyx can help you build a truly enabled workforce.
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